Sitemap checker

Use this sitemap checker to find a site's XML file and review URL limits. Test a sample of listed pages for errors, redirects and noindex before editing.

Free, no account. Ten site checks per hour.

Enter a domain to find its sitemap, or the sitemap address itself. Results can be cached for five minutes.

A sitemap checker finds and reads a site’s XML sitemap and checks it against the sitemaps.org rules. This one looks in robots.txt first, reads gzip files and up to 10 child sitemaps from an index, counts URLs against the 50,000 and 50 MB limits, checks lastmod dates and hosts, and tests 20 listed pages.

How to use this checker

Enter a site or a sitemap address
With a site address, we read the Sitemap lines in robots.txt, then try /sitemap.xml and /sitemap_index.xml. With an address ending in .xml, .gz or .txt, or one containing the word sitemap, we read that file directly.
Read the file checks
We check that the XML is well formed, uses the sitemaps.org namespace and stays under 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed. Each loc should be a full address on the same host and protocol, and lastmod should use the W3C date format without a future date. Very large files are read in part, and the result says so.
Test the sample
We pick 20 listed URLs spread across the files and request each one. A sitemap should list pages that answer 200, without redirects or noindex, because those are the pages you want indexed.

Questions about this checker

50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed per file. Larger sites split their URLs over several files and list them in a sitemap index, which has the same limits. Gzip saves bandwidth, but the 50 MB limit applies to the uncompressed file.

Every request reaches your server, and a full crawl would take minutes. Ten files and twenty pages spread across them are usually enough to show a problem that repeats, such as a template that adds noindex or a redirect rule that catches every URL.

Google uses lastmod when it is consistently accurate and ignores priority and changefreq. Leave lastmod out rather than setting every entry to today’s date.

It helps. A Sitemap line in robots.txt lets any crawler find the file. Submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools as well, to read their reports on it.

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Check your business in AI answers

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